The Ties That Bind Us
by iFabricator520
Summary: Well...shit. Eighteen years after Shaun's death, the Sole Survivor loses his next son...again. Jackson may be a typical rebel kid, but Nate will do anything to get him back. The only kicker is, he's gonna have to go all the way to Atlanta to do it, and he isn't the strapping young man he used to be. (SSxPiper, OCxOC)
1. Chapter 1

**Forward:** Just to be clear, this is Fallout, and there will be graphic content. I'm assuming that everybody who may read this has played the games, ergo do not be surprised when I'm writing about brains getting splattered on the floor. That said, I hope anybody reading this enjoys the following chapter.

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own the franchise or anything in it.

 **Fallout: The Ties That Bind Us**

"FIND HIM!" Nate roared, as he stormed the sterile halls of the Institute. Papers wafting over the railing of the director's quarters would only confirm to everybody below that the Director was having another of his fits. The difference was this time, the barge of a man was shaking the living daylights out of anybody who happened to cross his path. He still clutched the arm of the janitor as it's circuits cracked and fizzled from dismemberment.

He garnered fearful looks from scientists of all divisions as he shouldered his way to the one place he knew in his heart he'd find his answers. Nate knew it was wrong to pour out his molten emotions on his staff, but it felt too good to do it anyway. He justified it even further when memories of the resistance to his rule resurfaced in his mind. "Fuckers deserve it anyway," he muttered under his breath. It angered him that even eighteen years as their director, these eggheads still refused to trust him. Nate tried to put the thought out of his mind, as he stepped into the elevator that would send him up to the teleporter.

The doors slid closed with an almost inaudible hiss, and in less than a second he began to rise above the trinity that was the atrium. When the doors parted again and the cool grey interior of the entrance greeted him, distant memories of his past painfully rose like puss from a festering wound. Nate would've cried, if he weren't so angry. The molecular transponder ripped through him before he could think further on the matter.

~oOo~

Piper Wright found herself seated at her rusted steel desk, in front of a terminal that flickered on and off. She was in a quagmire, of that she was sure. She let out a sigh as she examined the gold band that fit snug on her right hand, running her fingers around the length of it's smooth face. She smiled briefly, before steeling herself from reliving the past; a tragic past.

Despite her vain efforts to forget the life she left behind, it found her again anyway. The Institute would always be a part of her life in some way or another it seemed, but she couldn't help but shake her head at the irony of it all. The Institute had in a way, abducted her too, but it was more complicated than that. It… _He_ had taken her heart, been the knight in shining armor, and started the reconstruction of the Commonwealth. But for all that heroism, he still had one big weakness, and one she should've seen coming long beforehand. _Family._

Family was the excuse used to eradicate the opposition in the settlements. Family was the excuse used to stifle the reports of his brutally calculated rule. Family was the reason he commanded that she take part in all of it. That she condone his misdeeds. It seemed after Shaun's identity became known to the Survivor, all cared about was family.

She loathed herself for the cliches of her reasoning. It was her take on family that set her apart from _him._ Piper wanted his legacy to be that of the Savior of the Commonwealth, the do-gooder she knew him as before his rise to power. She wanted people to remember the Nate that she loved, but it would come at a cost. She wondered now if her quest to save her family's name made her equally inept at ever knowing her own son. It only made sense to send the boy away before he became a part of their tainted legacy, however much it hurt as a mother.

Piper flinched when the door flew open and admitted the hulking profile of a man seething with cold rage. The dim lighting made it impossible to see anything more than the muscular profile of his body, but it didn't matter. She would never forget the presence of the man standing before her, not till the day she died. The awkward silence between the two seemed to drag on for years, before he asked the question she knew had been coming for the last thirty-five hours.

"Where. Is. Our. Son.?" Nate demanded.

~oOo~

The unmistakable sound of an N99 pistol being loaded pulled Jackson's head out of the clouds and his eyes to the gun on his forehead. The man wielding the weapon was middle-aged and sporting a somewhat toothless grin and covered in a motley of rags and leather supplements. The thief's lazy eyes darted around in no particular direction, to Jackson's total fascination. The notion that he was being robbed finally recurred to him, however, and he sucked in a breath as he finally processed his misfortune.

"Awright boy, lishun up!" the man said weakly, his hand shaking from the weight of the pistol.

The robber's monologue was abruptly cut short by Jackson's laughter, as he struggled to keep any kind of composure. The indignant look on the man's face almost made him feel a kind of pity towards him. It was comical, until the old coot put a shot into the air that caught Jackson completely off guard. Fear quickly turned to confidence though the more the young man thought about the power play. The crackpot could've just shot him and moved on, but he didn't.

"Ok ya little shit, ya wanna play hardball? I'll play." said the older man. His left eye finally made contact with Jackson's, and the shaking of the weapon ceased in an iron grip. "Gimme ev'rthan good ya got!" He wedged the pistol further into the wanderer's forehead to make his point.

Slowly, Jackson raised his hands and laid his rucksack down on the pavement, careful not to spook the angry scavenger. He watched in amusement as every inch of his pack was ransacked by the savage. The thief began to act more like the synthetic gorillas than an actual human being. Funny as it was, the young wanderer had had enough of the man's antics. Before the assailant could react, Jackson brandished his own sidearm and zapped the old man straight through the cranium. He winced at the smell of burnt brains and ozone that wafted off of the corpse.

The wanderer grinned to himself and gave his laser pistol a twirl before holstering it. He grabbed a pouch off his would-be ransomer and gave it a shake, nodding his head when it jingled with caps as he suspected.

"My how the tables have turned…" he muttered to himself, as he threw the bag of caps into his rucksack. He spared a glance at the rusted ten-mil pistol locked in the dead man's vice grip, and decided it wasn't worth taking. He trusted his ex-colleagues in Synth Retention more than he trusted that gun to not explode.

Jackson didn't need the extra weight anyways, if he was going to escape the institute. His Mother advised traveling light and keeping low would be his only shot, and he was inclined to believe her. So he slung his rucksack back across his shoulders and continued on the lonesome road. He didn't know where he'd end up, but that was kind of the point, he reasoned. _Anywhere but home._


	2. Chapter 2

**To those who liked and/or fav'd, thanks. To those that enjoyed my first chapter I apologize for not getting this out sooner, but school is demanding and I've got deadlines to meet. Anywho, in case it wasn't already blatantly obvious I don't own the Fallout universe or anything in it and blah blah blah. Enjoy and leave a review! (Constructive criticism is welcome.)**

 **The Ties That Bind Us**

She wanted to scream, to let her fists fly against him. _The audacity!_ _Barging into my home?_ Instead she tempered her reaction the best she could, realizing quickly her rage would be more than equally met. Beneath the angry facade however was a layer of hurt that she became acutely aware of now that Nate was here. It interrupted her thoughts, and put her off balance in a way she realized would never let her gain the upper hand. She wanted to breakdown at the utter unfairness of it all, but she stuck to her guns even still. If there were going to be any certainties here, it'd be that she went down fighting.

"Fancy seeing you again after a decade. Lose something?" she snarked. Piper immediately regretted her sarcasm when Nate's shoulders tensed and he took a step towards her, letting his intimidating physique do much of the talking. She realized she was on the brink of a full-blown flinch before he cocked his head suddenly, looking at her with those darkly cold blue eyes that once felt like an ocean of warmth. The anger all but vanished from his face suddenly, like a crazed predator realizing it picked a fight it shouldn't have. Relief pitted in her stomach briefly before his deep voice curdled it back into fear.

"Just my patience for passive aggression." Nate replied. He adopted an at ease pose as was usual when he started his arguments. His chin rose, and his eyes became hooded by his deep brows, only exaggerated by the poor lighting of her shanty.

 _Still sharp as ever, huh?_ She decided to stand her ground, and took two steps toward him despite every instinct screaming against it. Another few moments passed by as the pair stared down into each other's eyes with glowering fury, only to be ended when Nate scoffed and began pacing.

"Why did you let him go?!" he shouted. "What on Earth possessed you to throw him to the wastes?" His pacing quickened, and his hands flew outstretched in exasperation. A heavy mixture of confusion and white-hot anger painted her husband's face, radiating a suffocating heat that Piper could feel melting her cool resolve with each second.

"Because he needs to get out there! He's a grown man now, he's eighteen." she answered. "You can't keep treating him like, like one of your goddamn synths! For Christ's sake Nate he's your son!"

"Cut the bullshit Piper, we both know he's far better off in the Institute!" Nate retorted, visibly leaking raw feelings. "I'm building a life for us down there, a safe life with all the comforts of home, and with incredible responsibility, and he needs to be ready for that."

"Says you!" she shot back, her voice heating up. "All he ever does down there is be bored while you plan his life for him!" She crossed her arms in a defiant stance that was quickly answered with a blow to the cheek that left her reeling, grabbing for anything to stop her from falling to the floor.

"At least being bored is better than being dead!" Nate yelled back, his face donning a deeper shade of red and his eyes now blood-crazed. "I would that think you, of all people, would appreciate the chance to live a life spared the loss of a parent."

"Do not go there with me Nate! You don't have the high ground here." Piper screamed, as she grabbed her ten-mil pistol from the desk, aiming straight between her old friend's troubled eyes. "Push one more of my buttons you miserable bastard, or so help me, I'll shoot you myself."

"You wouldn't…" Nate whispered, now stopped cold in his tracks. His eyebrows now rested neutral on his face, as did his mouth, but Piper knew him too well. His eyes betrayed the false front of calm he put on.

"Get. OUT!" demanded Piper, giving her sidearm a heft to emphasize the importance of the implied, "NOW". Even still, Nate refused to budge, in fact he took a step closer. The reporter actively fought the shoot the man before her. To release all her frustrations with a single trigger pull. Instead, it only frustrated her more that she had a free opportunity and she couldn't do it. _Wouldn't do it_.

The deafening -POP!- of the ten-mil threw Piper more off-balance than it did Nate, who flinched but didn't stumble backward like she had. It did, however, put an expression of resignation on her lover's face, as his once arched back slouched a touch, and his shoulders slumped. He gave a slight nod of his head, and his fingers merely danced across the archaic pip-boy still adorned on his wrist, before he vanished in white lightning.

Just before the director left in regular fashion, Piper managed to catch something so subtle, so quiet, she almost believed she imagined it. Her heart suddenly ached a familiar ache like it hadn't in so long, and the world seemed to flip on it's head.

"Goodbye, Piper."

~oOo~

For the first time in a long time, Nate found himself without much to say. There was so much wrong, so much hurt, he caused her. He hadn't realized it until he let his anger flow unrestrained, when he knocked her to the floor. _She's my wife, for fuck's sake!_

When the haunting halls of the Institute welcomed him once more, Nate snorted in disgust and kept a pace that almost equaled a jog, brushing past the personnel at the terminal and worker-synths alike. Jackson needed to be found, and his family was still torn asunder. The director made no secret of his distrust of the synths, and he would not entrust them on their own to return his son unharmed. _If you want it done right…_ That however, left an uncomfortable question about who remained king of the proverbial hill.

The elevator jumped as it landed in the atrium, whisper quiet as ever. Nate calmly stepped out, now keenly aware of just how dirty his pristine uniform had become just standing around in Diamond City. He itched his thin beard in discomfort and made for his quarters immediately, waving off the occasional empty greetings from passerby synths and scientists.

Names were running through the Director's mind as he juggled who his temporary successor would be, and who he could trust not to betray him. _Dr. Li? No, to cold, extremely cunning. That old snake would make sure to be rid of me. Dr. Ayo? No, ambitious, unreliable. Would grab power for himself. Dr. Filmore? No, obviously fake and hiding likely a multitude of her own ambitions. Not to be trusted. Dr. Holdren? Maybe…_

"What a headache…" Nate muttered. Quickly, the director gathered himself and resolved to form a plan. There had to be someone he could trust, and soon. Time was of the essence if he wanted to find his son in one piece.

~oOo~

 _Goddamn it's fucking hot outside._ Jackson started to regret his decision to leave his utility skin behind with his mother. The air conditioning would have been a welcome trade-off for all the cover his…disguise…offered him. Perhaps more importantly though, he missed the warm companionship that the suit's A.I. provided. So he was told, Codsworth used to be his father's household Mr. Handy, before receiving a transfer to Jackson's very own Mark II suit. It was a sad goodbye to say the least, but the pain from leaving Codsey behind only paled in comparison to the misery of spending more time idle in the white and unexciting halls of his home. _Still hurts that a computer was a better friend to me than my father was._

The wastes certainly hadn't lifted his mood much, with the depressing gray of washed-out concrete rolling in waves over the dead sand of the commonwealth, with only the occasional twig sticking out of the ground. The brahmin leather pants and wool shirt were starting to suck as they kept in more heat than they let out, especially today of all days when he needed the roads to guide him. Then there was that old guy at the outskirts of Boston, whose spry and feral nature filled Jackson with a mix of fear and pity. It was the only thing that pestered him worse than the fucking sun.

Every reasonable argument he could muster supported his first act of violence unconditionally, but even so it felt so… _wrong._ Scenarios kept popping up, things like "what if he had a family?", or "what if he needed my stuff to buy lunch?" It was just plain weird to have thoughts like these. _Is this what guilt feels like?_

Pushing his thoughts away, Jackson looked forward and gazed at an empty red rocket station appear over the horizon. There would finally be adequate shade, but more importantly, drinks. As he neared his eyes narrowed on an intact nuke-cola machine out in front of it. He licked his lips in anticipation for the legendary drink. He'd only heard rumors of it's divine taste, and fantasized of the cool rush of carbonated water running down his throat. He quickened his pace despite the chaffing of his leathers until he found refuge in the shade of the coolant stations.

The machine stood no chance against Jackson's hands as he pillaged a bottle from the vendor. _Nuka Cola…finally!_ Just as he popped the cap and put the glass to his lips it was snatched away instantly. The wanderer froze for a solid minute, hand still out in front of him as if he still held the bottle, trying to process how the soda magically left his grasp.

"Not so fast mother fucker! You gotta pay for that first." warned a scrawny woman. The lines that creased her face told Jackson she was far older than he, probably in her 60's if his instincts were right. She hobbled quickly back inside the coolant station.

"Pay for what? Soda that's two-hundred years old?" Jackson asked. "What a joke." He lowered his hands and followed the lady inside the Red Rocket, determined still to taste the drink. Hopefully for free.

The unlit interior blinded Jackson at first, as his eyes adjusted to the absence of sunlight. There were guns propped against the wall behind the sales counter, of all shapes and sizes, with food packages up front and center. On the walls that weathered little damage hung tools like bodies in a raider den, and perhaps most curiously, there lay a rug on the floor in the center of the room, atop of which stood the old crone.

"Quit the shit kid, we all eat stale food everyday. You wouldn't have grabbed the soda if you didn't want it." She said, leaning into her statement, almost falling over in the process. She squinted as she looked him over, seemingly scrutinizing every detail. Briefly her eyes widened, but she normalized her expression immediately. Her mouth opened as if to say something, but she promptly closed her rotting maw as her fingers floated tentatively from her sides. _Strange…_

"Thanks for spelling it out, you're now the first person I've met who isn't a complete tool." Jackson remarked. "How much are you charging for the damn soda?" The old woman didn't budge so much as an inch at his veiled insult, not even a change in expression. She just simply lifted the already opened bottle to her lips and began to chug. _Fuck you too._

"Normally I might charge you ten caps _vault boy,_ " she spat, the last two words dripping with venom. "But pricks can pay double."

"Vault boy? Listen granny I have no idea what you're on about, but how 'bout you cool your tits and just get me a goddamn drink already." Jackson said, keenly aware he was losing his patience. _Why is NOBODY polite out here? Jesus fuck!_ He wanted to just kill her already and move on, but reminded himself he was better than the savages outside. Savages like the elderly woman in front of him.

"Caps first pretty boy!" she snarled, putting out an expectant hand. The wanderer dug through his pockets for loose caps and counted to make sure they numbered twenty, before placing them in the scavengers hand. He squeezed a bit just to make sure the the "fuck you" came across crystal clear.

She in turn, smiled a partially toothless smile before retreating behind the counter, limping the way over. The clinks signaled the imminent delivery of Nuka-Cola, before it materialized over the counter. Curiously, it had a different cap and color, and as Jackson opened his mouth to say something the old scavenger interrupted him.

"It's not the regular flavor jackass, I know, I've got the last of those." She gestured with the bottle she snatched earlier. "It's quantum. You takin' or leaving kid?" she said.

"I hate you." Jackson replied, begrudgingly taking his soft drink and popping the cap. The glowing-blue liquid felt unexpectedly rough, before his throat was engulfed in what felt like a raging fire. The wanderer felt his eyes bulge at the shock of the way it felt, the sheer power of the chemical reaction raging in his esophagus. Then came the eye of the storm, the sweet, delicious taste that had been the subject of the legends, seeping into each bud on his tongue. _Fuck it's amazing!_

Colors seemed to intensify, every detail became more pronounced. The rubble piles and brick stacks in the corners seemed to pop out, and the old lady began to swing wildly left and right. Weightlessness consumed Jackson's body as he felt himself lose control of balance, and he stumbled around. _Something's not right…_

He brought the bottle to eyes, but his arm froze halfway in it's journey, as did his legs, then his face. Dizziness hit him like hammer straight to the noggin, before he fell backward to the ground. The old crone stood over him, still smiling that same ominous smile that she had before, even cackling a bit as she finished the last of her own soda before discarding the bottle.

"You should've walked when you had the chance, pretty boy. Now your sweet ass gets outta my face, and I get your stuff!" She kicked Jackson's ever-stiffening legs as if to confirm what she already knew, and began emptying his pockets. Minute by minute he could only watch as he lost his ammo, guns, and bubble gum. It suddenly dawned on the wanderer where all the stuff around the room came from, and he hated himself for underestimating this unusually well-equipped old lady. He was about to start bathing in self-pity before the sky outside filled with whining noise, followed by a thud and screech.

The ground shook lightly as what sounded like footsteps approached the door, before a behemoth of steel entered the room. The man stood roughly seven feet in the suit of black armor, the round shroud hugging his back and shoulders only adding to his intimidating bulk. The "eyes" of the insect-like mask glowing a terrifying yellow, as they pierced his soul. The mark born on his chest consisted of an "E" surrounded by thirteen stars.

"We'll take the specimen from here." came the scrambled voice of the armored man. Jackson wanted to scream, and tried frantically to move his unresponsive limbs as the steel hulk lumbered towards him. Drowsiness finally settled in, and the last thing he saw was a steel gauntlet moving to grab him.


End file.
